Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Occupy Wall Street Movement, where are you?

Occupy
Wall Street unites people regardless of colors, genders and political
persuasions as a leaderless resistance movement. The common thing between those
people is that They Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and
corruption of the 1%. The official website states that movement is using
the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve their goals and encourage the
use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.

Up
to this date, numerous debates on gathering in Zuccotti Park in September 2011
still taking place. While the first Occupiers had originally came to protest Wall
Street, once the movement began their game plan was not very clear. What are
their goals? How are they going to pursue them? Nevertheless, Occupy began to
spread throughout the States and internationally, despite the lack of clarity.
After a month there were hundreds of other protests, debates, critiques across
not only American society.

Even
though Occupiers did not issue clear demands, one thing became evident to me
right away: they are aiming to reverse the agenda of global capitalism, which
increases socio-economic inequality and originates in U.S. Among the key
organizers there were Kalle Lasn, head of a small anti-consumerist magazine
from Vancouver, Vlad Teichberg, former derivatives trader, and David Graeber,
anthropologist at the University of London. They continue to build a movement
even after violent evictions across the U.S. and other countries. Some people
think it had come to an end. I don't believe that protesters had an intention of abandoning a
movement that had already bought out thousands of people to demand attention to
the economic inequalities.

On
the other hand, Occupy is not winning the war. No tangible results are seen, no
real organizational policy, no legislation influenced, no candidates put
forward. Nothing had really changed. Movement was set out to promote
self-expression and did not focus on any particular goal. Occupy together with
many labor unions could be a winning coalition of citizens, taking into account
that even police is unionized in New York. Organizers probably didn't care
about win-lose situations. They overly relied on viral effect of an idea. But even
small victories in a movement, struggle, resistance, campaign can turn
participants into fearless winners, who will feed off those win moments and get
only stronger. First of all, Occupy Wall Street needs a mission, so people can relate to it and follow. Without it the
movement has a risk to remain weak and uninfluential.